Time & Perspective Quote by Charles F. Kettering

Failure is tolerated right up until it isn’t: the moment you decide you’re done. Kettering’s line has the clean, workshop logic of an inventor who spent a career turning misfires into prototypes. It reframes “don’t fail” from a moral scold into a timing problem. You’re allowed to be wrong, repeatedly, as long as you keep the experiment running.

The intent is slyly practical. Kettering isn’t promising that persistence magically delivers victory; he’s pointing out that quitting is the only failure that can’t be iterated on. In a lab or a garage, a failed attempt is data. A final attempt is a verdict. The subtext is almost confrontational: if you’re going to stop, understand what you’re choosing. You can’t claim bad luck, a flawed market, or insufficient resources once you close the notebook. The “last time” pins responsibility to the decision to exit.

Context matters because Kettering worked in an era when American industrial R&D was becoming systematized: trial, measurement, refinement. He helped make invention less like lightning and more like process. The quote smuggles that worldview into a motivational aphorism. It also quietly deflates the romance of “never fail.” Inventors fail constantly; their reputations are built on the rare attempt that survives.

What makes it work is the paradox: it grants you permission to fail while raising the stakes on your endurance. It’s not about heroism; it’s about staying in the game long enough for the error to become instruction instead of obituary.